


It’s (Not so) Different for Dean

by Innwich



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Female Castiel, Gay Dean, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Genderfluid, Genderfuck, Genderswap, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Jealousy, M/M, Misogyny, Physical Abuse, Sexism, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean had always known he liked guys, although John never approved. But after Dean was pulled out of Hell by an angel with blue eyes and painted red lips, he wasn’t so sure what he liked anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sam and John had been screaming at each other for the better part of the last hour in the motel room. Dean was staring at his physics textbook and trying to make himself look as small as possible on the couch.

“Tell him, Dean.” Sam scowled, wearing his best twelve-year-old bitchface.

Great.

“Tell me, Dean.” John turned his angry gaze to Dean. “I know you are not a faggot.”

Dean didn’t flinch at the word. It wasn’t hard, when John had been throwing the word around ever since he walked in on Dean kissing Pete from school on the motel room couch. Dean had just scrambled up and buttoned his shirt, when John pulled Pete off of Dean and kicked Pete out of the room.

The silence was heavy as Sam and John waited for his answer.

Sam’s lips were downturned at the corners, like he was prepared to be disappointed, while John just looked plain murderous.

This wasn’t how he planned to come out to John.

“Uh.” Dean cleared his throat.

“We’ll forget about this. Dean is just confused.” John picked up his car keys from the table. “I’ll let you boys sleep this off.”

“You n ever listen to us, Dad!” Sam said angrily. “I’m so sick of your bullshit.”

“Watch your mouth, boy.” John growled.

“Fuck you.”

“Shut up, both of you.” Dean pushed the two of them apart. John looked ready to punch Sam. “Sam’s right. I’m gay.”

“What did you say?” John said slowly.

“I like guys, Dad,” Dean said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Take it or leave it.”

John looked lost. “How about that Cindy girl, or the Alice that used to come over? They are nice-looking girls. I know they like you.”

“I don’t like them,” Dean said. Cindy and Alice smelled like the bright orange shampoo at the drug store: Fake as hell and fruity as fuck. “I don’t like women. That’s kind of the definition of being gay.”

“Have you even tried to be with a woman, son?” John said. “I can take you to places. Places where women put out after a round of beer. None of those purity ring crap”

“Dammit, Dad!” Dean shouted. “I’m not you! I like dicks.”

John backhanded him so hard across his face that Dean tasted blood. Something came loose in his mouth, probably a tooth or two. Sam screamed and tried to hit John with his small fists. John pushed Sam away. “I will give you one more chance to take it back.”

“I’m not sorry for that. This is who I am,” Dean said, holding his aching cheek. “I won’t apologize for it.”

John glowered. When Dean refused to back down, John finally stormed out of the room with a dangerously red face. Dean could hear a car door slam and a familiar engine start. The Impala pulled out of the motel car park.

Dean slumped onto the ratty couch like the air had gone out of him. He couldn’t help the tears slipping from his eyes or his breath catching in his throat, making him shake all over like he’d run a marathon.

Sam approached Dean tentatively.

“I’m proud of you, Dean,” Sam said with a great big grin stretched over his small face.

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean said with a wobbly smile.

“You’re my big brother, no matter what,” Sam said, clinging to Dean like a giant koala bear.

Dean laughed, despite the tears and the blood on his face. He looked like shit, but he could care less. “You’re a big baby.”

It was the first time in a long while Sam had looked at Dean with anything like admiration and pride, since Sam entered the rebellion stage of puberty, since Sam stopped looking up to his big brother with childish wonder.

He must’ve done something right if he got Sam to look at him like that.

Dean was proud of himself too.

\- - -

John returned two days later. He didn’t say a word about women or the bruise developing on Dean’s cheek.

“Pack your stuff. We’re leaving in an hour,” John said.

On their way to a new town, Sam whined about the move. He was supposed to be in the final round of their school’s spelling bee contest next week. Dean felt sick, because he knew he was the reason John uprooted everything and moved them again. The way John’s mind worked, he probably thought getting Dean away from Pete would make Dean straight again.

But it wasn’t Pete. It was Dean.

For the following months, Dean noticed more and more women were throwing themselves at him whenever he went out with John to bars.

It got old real fast.

After shoving away another woman that was too eager and too handsy at the pool table, Dean stomped to the bar where John was downing a beer. “Stop it. You can’t turn me straight.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said. He looked Dean in the eyes. “Go get her, tiger.”

Dean walked out of the bar.

\- - -

Dean didn’t exactly keep his sexual orientation a secret.

He wasn’t shy about winking at guys that glanced in his way in the changing room after gym class. He never failed to hook up with a guy within his first week at a new school

More than once, he got the whole “You’ll go to Hell, faggot!” speech on his way back from school. The thing Dean hated the most about it was that Sam had to hear those hateful speeches. Sam turned red at the tips of his ears and started yelling on Dean’s behalf. When the tough guys at school called Dean ‘the new faggot’ and tried to kick his ass, Dean was too happy to let them know they were biting off more than they could chew off.

People usually got the message after that.

But sometimes, there were one or two girls that wouldn’t give up.

“You’re Dean, right?” A girl sat down next to him at lunch hour. Her skirt was shorter than the school dress code allowed.

Dean recognized her. Her name was something like Kathy or Katie. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Katie. I’m in your English class,” Katie said.

“How you doing?”

“Do you want to come over at my house after school?” Katie slid a hand up his thigh. “My parents are out of town.”

Dean chuckled. “Look, you’re cute, but I’m not interested.”

“Come on,” Katie said, leaning close to Dean. She had way too many buttons open at the top of her blouse. Dean remembered her skirt was longer when they were in English class an hour ago. “My friends bet that I can get you interested.”

“Nope, I’m gay,” Dean said.

“I know,” Katie said, drawing back. She looked over Dean in a way that made him want to cover himself up. She pouted with glittery lipsticked lips, “What a waste.”

Dean had to remind himself he didn’t beat up girls that weren’t bloodthirsty monsters. As she walked away bac k to her group of friends, he called, “What kind of fucked up bet was that?”

\- - -

After Dean left school, he was free to be a full-time hunter.

Sex on the road was eventful, to say the least. He’d been caught in compromising positions, and he’d been yelled at and punched at for more times than he could count. But frankly, Bible-thumpers that had a bone to pick with him were no match for the creatures he fought on a daily basis, even if they were both monsters in different ways.

Sometimes, when they stayed at one of the quiet little towns in the South, Sam stopped Dean before he headed out to the bars for the night. “Be careful, Dean.”

Dean wanted to say how unfair it was he had to be careful. He wanted to hold someone’s hands in public and kissed them on the mouth without having to be careful, because it was his own damn business and no one else’s, but then Sam shot him a puppy-eyed look, and Dean yielded. “When am I not careful, bitch?”

“Jerk.”

Dean didn’t try to advertise the fact, but the word went around, and most people in the hunter community knew his preference for guys. A lot of hunters didn’t care; they had their own shit to worry about. Anyone who took issue with it grudgingly admitted Dean was a damn good hunter even if he was gay.

It was known that Dean broke a jaw every time he heard that ‘even if’ out of someone’s mouth.

He picked up guys. Most of the times, the other guy knew it was fun and they would never see each other again when the sun rose. If Dean broke a heart, he could drive away and leave it behind and never deal with it again.

He never dealt with it a lot.

But here and there, he met a guy that he seriously considered stopped hunting for. There was the personal trainer in San Francisco who had arms as thick as a tree trunk and was great at making sure Dean got the best sex he’d ever had in their life. Then there was the librarian in a sleepy town in Montana. Brian knew everything from Ancient Egyptian mythology to modern literature. He loved fast food and rock music, and he had a full head of golden curls that Dean couldn’t keep his hands out of and glasses that should be illegal for how hot they looked on him.

Dean knew he was not gonna get an apple-pie life with kids and a wife and a dog. It was hard enough to get married to a guy in most states, not to mention Dean’s rap sheet meant he was pretty much disqualified from adopting a kid. Dean’s idea of an apple-pie life would be being with a guy that got every one of his jokes and didn’t mind spending the nights at home drinking beer and watching shitty television shows, and on weekends having amazing sex that left both of them limping.

The apple-pie life was a lot like the life Dean had with Brian.

It was more than enough to make Dean want to stay.

But, as always, Sam and John found Dean eventually, like Dean was one big homing beacon whose frequency they were permanently tuned to. They waited for him outside in the Impala, despite barely able to stand each other in the same car. But home was where the heart was, and Dean’s heart belonged to his snotty little brother and his asshole of a dad.

It was two in the morning when Dean finally hunted down every piece of clothing he left in Brian’s drawers.

“I’ll miss you,” Brian said with red-rimmed eyes. He was shivering in the ridiculous sweater he insisted on wearing.

“Come here,” Dean said gruffly, and pulled Brian into a hug. Brian held Dean and gripped onto the back of his leather jacket. Dean muttered into Brian’s shoulder, “I miss you already.”

They shared a wet kiss on the porch. Dean didn’t know if those were his tears or Brian’s, but they tasted bitter.

The horn of the Impala echoed loudly across the street.

And Dean always answered the call of family.


	2. Chapter 2

After Sam left for Stanford, Dean hunted with John.

On the nights after successful hunts, Dean liked to trawl bars for guys looking for a good time. He brought them to his motel room and fucked them senseless. John was never around on those nights.

Dean would like John to not turn and run like Dean had the plague, but he’d long passed trying to convince John to do things he didn’t want.

The hunts were good. Dean never felt as alive as when he was hunting.

Then there was a werewolf case in Kentucky.

It should be an easy hunt. They knew who the werewolf was, and they went in armed to the teeth with silver bullets and silver knives. What they didn’t expect was that there were two werewolves.

When they killed one of the werewolves, the other werewolf went berserk. Dean didn’t duck quickly enough. The werewolf caught Dean in the stomach with its claws, before John shot it in the heart.

After that it was a blur of motions and sounds of John dragging him to the Impala, as Dean drifted in and out of consciousness.

Dean woke up in a hospital bed later at night. Amidst the beeping of the machines, someone was talking by his bedside. Dean kept still, pretending to still be asleep. He could just make out the outline of John sitting next to the bed.

“Don’t die,” John was mumbling. He sounded drunk. “Don’t die. I don’t want you to go to Hell for what you are. I don’t want you to go to Hell, Dean.”

It hurt worse than any punches John could throw at him.

Dean didn’t cry into his pillow.

\- - -

When John went on a hunt alone and didn’t return, Dean just figured John couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. A week ago, John found two used condoms in the Impala and refused to speak for a whole day.

But John never came back, and finally, Dean had to go to Stanford to ask for Sam’s help.

Once Dean met Jess, he realized Sam was going to have an apple-pie life. Sam was going to have half a dozen kids and be a lawyer and live the dream with a pretty wife by his side.

Sam was going to be normal.

Dean gazed at Jess’s tight top pointedly, and grinned. “I love the Smurfs.”

“Hey, last I heard, you’re gay, Dean,” Sam said, with a tense little smile.

“Still am, but she’s way out of your league, man,” Dean said.

That got a good laugh out of Sam and Jess.

“We’ve got to talk,” Dean said more seriously, “about Dad.”

Later, Jess burnt on a ceiling.

Sam’s apple-pie life went up in smoke with her.

\- - -

Sam moped around a lot after Jess died. Sam was never a willing participant in the hunt, but he now understood got what it was like for Dean to want to go after the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Dean loved having his little brother back; it was like they were back together as a family again.

But Sam could be reckless and vengeful sometimes, so it wasn’t entirely Dean’s fault that they fought and that he dropped Sam off in the middle of nowhere. Dean was surprised when they went to a bar, and Sam pointed out a blonde girl he had helped out that time Dean and Sam split up. It wasn’t often they ran across someone they knew on the road. Dean couldn’t blame Sam for picking up a girl who looked like she needed help.

It was their fault they didn’t check whether she was human first.

Turned out Meg was a demon that was controlling shadow demons.

A sex-crazed demon that tied them to posts and wanted to molest them.

“Oh, you’re cute,” Meg said, grinding down in Dean’s lap. Dean couldn’t move with his hands tied behind his back. “How about we give your brother a show?”

Dean grinned at her. “Ain’t gonna work on me unless you got a dick in those pants somewhere.”

Meg slapped him across the face. “Are you saying you want me to wear your brother, Dean? I can do that. I can give you a real hard pounding that you won’t ever forget.”

“That’s disgusting.” Dean spat blood at her. “You stay away from him, you hear me?”

She smirked, sliding off his lap. “We’ll see about that.”

When Meg went to terrorize Sam, Dean started sawing away at the rope tying his hands. In the end, Sam got out of the ropes first and overturned the altar Meg had been using to control the shadow demons. They escaped while the shadow demons dropped Meg out of the window

“I told you,” Dean said as he drove away from Meg’s building, bleeding from the corner of his eye. He hoped the bitch was dead. She deserved it. “You can’t trust women. They’ll eat you alive.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Because you have so much experience dealing with women.”

“They’ve got you whipped, bitch.”

“Jerk.”

\- - -

Meg wasn’t dead.

She came back, along with John and Yellow Eyes and a truck that crushed the Impala.

When Dean woke up in a hospital bed, he choked on the breathing tube in his throat. Sam was there. Doctors and nurses rushed in when Sam called them. Dean let himself be poked at and answered questions about how he felt. He could move his legs and his arms and his toes, and yes, he felt someone kicked him in the head. After way too many medical machines were wheeled in and out of his room, and John took Sam’s place by his bed.

Dean smiled weakly at John from his bed. John looked drained. One of his arms was in a sling. That might explain why he looked so pale.

“There is something I have to ask you to do,” John said.

Dean didn’t like it when John got serious like that. He said warily, “What is it?”

“I want you to watch out for Sammy, okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, blinking up at John. This was actually something he could do and do well, something he’d been doing for his whole life. “You know I will, Dad.”

“But you have to kill Sam if you can’t keep him safe.”

Dean could only look at him in shock, because John had to be out of his mind.

“I’m proud of you. You won’t go to Hell, Dean.” John just gave him a small smile, and left Dean to stare after him as he left the room.

John died soon after that.

John’s words never left Dean. Not his words about Sam, and not his words about Hell.

It was only after they found out about crossroads demons that Dean figured out John had made a deal to save Dean, in exchange for spending eternity in Hell. That night, after Sam went to get salad for himself, Dean bought a case of Jack Daniels to drown out John’s voice in his mind. It dulled to become no more than a throb in the back of his mind.

The door of the motel room opened. Sam glanced at the bottles scattered on the coffee table. “What’s the occasion?”

“Dad sold his soul for me,” Dean said, holding his head between his hands. The carpet was starting to look like an appealing place to sleep. “Because he thought I was going to Hell.”

“Why would he think that?” Sam settled into the seat next to Dean on the couch. Dean knew that look on Sam’s face; it was the I-won’t-judge-you face that Sam used to invite people to talk to him about anything, even weird shit like aliens and ghosts. Dean was so drunk he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do exactly that.

“What do you think, Sammy? I sleep with guys. You know how much Dad was against it,” Dean said. He chuckled hysterically. “I’m going to Hell when I die.”

“You’re not going to Hell,” Sam said fiercely. “Dad was full of shit.”

“He was one of the best hunters out there. If anyone knew anything about Hell, it was him.”

“He was raised in a time when people didn’t tolerate homosexuality. It didn’t help that he was a US Marine. You have to take his words with a pinch of salt,” Sam said.

“You sure about that?” Dean said. “We both know Hell exists, and Dad was pretty sure I’ll take a trip downstairs.”

“Dad didn’t know anything,” Sam insisted.

“I guess it didn’t matter in the end,” Dean said. “Dad thought he was doing me a favor and he died doing it. How was that different from me putting a bullet in his head?”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was Dad’s decision,” Sam said. “You need to stop listening to Dad, Dean. He is dead.”

“I know,” Dean said, downing his drink. It was pouring a line of fire down his throat. “Believe me, I know. It’s like he’s haunting me.”

\- - -

John’s deal ate away at Dean. So when Sam died, Dean made a deal to exchange his life for Sam’s.

It wasn’t a difficult decision.

He was going to Hell either way; it might as well be for Sammy.

\- - -

For the next few months, Sam looked for loopholes to get Dean out of the deal. Dean mostly tried to not to think about the deal, hooking up with as many guys as he could. Then Ruby came along to join them as a rag-tag team.

Dean didn’t trust her.

They tracked down Lilith, the demon holding Dean’s contract, but they were too late and the deal was due. At the end of the struggle, Sam was pressed up against a wall and Dean was held down on a desk by invisible demonic powers.

The only thing keeping the hellhound from Dean was a wooden door and some powder on the floor. Lilith stood by the door in Ruby’s old meatsuit.

The clock struck twelve.

“Time to say goodbye, you two.” Lilith’s eyes turned an ugly white, and she grinned widely at Dean and Sam as she turned the door handle. “Sic ‘em, boy.”

The door flung open. Dean couldn’t move from the table where Lilith’s powers had pinned him to, he could only watch as the snarling monster dog leap straight for the arteries in his legs. Blood sprayed everywhere, painting his clothes.

His blood.

“Dean!” Sam screamed.

Hysterically, as the hellhound clawed open his belly and ripped out his guts, Dean thought about how the people who had told him he was going to Hell had been right all along: He was going to Hell.

“No!” Sam was crying. Tears and snot were running down his face. “Stop it!”

It was the last thought that Dean ever had.


	3. Chapter 3

Six months later, Dean crawled out of his grave.

It wasn’t hard to convince Bobby he was the real deal, after being splashed in the face with holy water and cut with a silver knife.

Sam was obviously trying to cry like a baby when he swept Dean into a hug.

“I can’t believe you’re back,” Sam said with a wide grin. “How did you make it out?”

“Someone pulled me out. Left a friggin handprint on my arm,” Dean said. “Guess whoever it is really wants me bad, huh?”

They went to Pamela to find out what brought Dean back. At the end of a séance, Pamela’s eyes were burnt out of her head, and they only got a name: Castiel.

As Dean watched Pamela be loaded into the back of an ambulance, he decided there was no way this thing could be anything but bad news. They had a new player on the field, something more powerful than they had ever seen before, and, for some reason, the first thing it did was to pull Dean’s ass out of hell.

Dean and Bobby drew sigils and traps and warding on the walls of the barn they were holed up in.

Just when Dean thought the summoning spell was a bust, the walls of the barn rattled like a sudden storm was brewing right above them. Dean readied his sawed-off shotgun. Bobby did likewise.

The rattling got louder, and then the door swung open.

A woman in a pantsuit and trench coat strolled through the doors, and headed straight for them. 

Light bulbs burst and rained sparks on her, lighting up her cleft chin, messy bun, blue eyes, and harsh red lips.

After the many women-shaped monsters Dean had fought, he didn’t even blink as he opened fire on the thing.

The salt rounds shredded the front of her coat but didn’t stop her. She was tall even without her low heels. With them on, she was as tall as Dean. He could feel her warm breath on his face when she stopped in front of him.

Dean gripped Ruby’s demon-killing knife. “Who are you?”

Castiel, because there was nothing else she could be, rumbled in a gravelly voice, “I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”

“Yeah. Thanks for that.” Dean plunged the knife in Castiel’s chest.

Castiel didn’t flinch when she plucked out the knife and dropped it to the floor like so much scrap metal.

Behind her, Bobby swung a crowbar at her head. She didn’t look away from Dean when she caught Bobby’s crowbar with her bare hand. Turning around, she touched Bobby with her fingers to his forehead. Bobby’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he fell.

Dean knelt next to Bobby with his heart in his throat, checking his wrist for a pulse. He didn’t care if it left his back open to attack from Castiel. “Bobby?”

Castiel was standing where Dean had left her, tall and aloof. “Your friend is alive.”

“Who are you?” Dean said.

“Castiel.”

“Yeah, I figured that much. I mean what are you?”

Castiel looked at Dean seriously. “I'm an Angel of the Lord.”

“Right, and I’m the King of England,” Dean said. He couldn’t help it; he friggin’ laughed. Sam was the religious one, not him. Why would he believe in a religion that thought he deserved to go to Hell because of who he slept with? Better yet, why would he believe in a god that would let his mom be killed by a demon, and let John and Sam and Dean died after everything they had done for people?

Dean soon stopped laughing when lightning flashed and shadows shaped like wings appeared behind Castiel. She flexed her shoulders, and her wings unfurled, spreading across the width of the barn.

She was larger than life. She was rain and lightning and fire and storm. She eclipsed all the monsters that Dean had fought before, even the wendigoes to hellhounds and demons.

She was bigger and badder. And she was here for Dean.

Dean blinked. The shadows were gone, but the image was etched in his brain. He could still see the creature barely contained in the womanly flesh standing in front of him.

“I have work for you,” Castiel announced.

\- - -

After the mess with the raising of Samhain, Dean sat on a park bench, just to get away from Sam and the angels.

Kids were swinging from the monkey bars and crawling up the slides. A couple of toddlers giggled and flung wet sand at each other, their sand castles long abandoned.

One of the sixty six seals was broken and they were one step closer to the Apocalypse, but Dean didn’t regret a thing. Helping people was what he did; it was the only thing that mattered. The angels could go find some other seals to save if saving the seal meant killing these people.

Leaves rustled, and when Dean looked to his left, Cas was sitting there right next to him.

It should say something that Dean wasn’t surprised by her teleporting trick anymore.

Dean sneaked at look at Cas’s profile, as she watched kids playing on a playground. There was a soft look in her eyes when she wasn’t frowning. With the sun shining from above them, Dean realized Cas, or at least the woman she was wearing, couldn’t have been more than a few years older than him.

It was the dark red lipstick that made her look sterner than she actually was.

“Let me guess, you’re here for the ‘I told you so’,” Dean said.

“No,” Cas said. She smiled with the barest quirk of her lips. “I was hoping you’d choose to save the town. I wasn’t disappointed.”

And when she talked about orders and doubts, Dean thought he might believe her.

\- - -

It was stupid, but Sam was always wondering off to god-knew-where these days, and Dean couldn’t afford to wait for him when he’d found a demon to interrogate about the next seal that Lilith was planning to break.

That was why Dean got tackled by the demon waiting behind the door of a warehouse.

Dean could only fire off a quick prayer before the demon knelt on his chest and wrapped thick fingers around his neck, throttling him.

Cas appeared out of the thin air behind the demon. She strode forwards and yanked the demon off Dean.

Dean gasped for breath on the floor.

Cas held the demon by his neck and pressed him against the wall. The demon struggled and clawed at the hand wrapped around his throat. Cas didn’t budge, but the demon’s fingernails were tearing and blood was seeping out of his fingertips.

“Fuck you, bitch.” The demon sneered at her, turning purple in the face.

“I’m not a female dog,” Cas said blandly. She pressed a hand to his head. A white light filled the room, forcing Dean to cover his eyes. When he looked again, the demon’s body dropped like a sack of bones to the floor, a few feet away from him. Two smoking empty holes were all that were left of its eye sockets. Dean could still smell the flesh cooking.

“Damn,” Dean said hoarsely, blinking away the white spots in front of his eyes.

Cas squatted next to him. “Dean?”

“Yeah.” Dean rolled onto his back, and coughed. His voice was coming out weird. He hoped the black-eyed douchebag hadn’t damaged his voice box. Dean tucked his legs underneath him, but they trembled when he tried to get up from the floor. “A little help?”

Cas gripped Dean by the arm and damn near hauled him up from the floor. She eyed him with a frown. “I’m sorry I can’t heal you.”

“It’s fine,” Dean croaked, rubbing at his sore neck. It was gonna be ringed with bruises tomorrow. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Take care, Dean,” Cas said, before fluttering off.

Dean kicked at the demon corpse on the floor. The body flopped like a limp fish.

Dean might just be sold on this angel partnership thing.

\- - -

Dean lay on the dirty floor where Alastair had dropped him, after Cas failed to kill Alastair with Ruby’s knife.

At least one of Dean’s ribs was broken and it felt like he was breathing with shards of broken glass in his lungs. Every breath he took hurt. Dean kept his eyes open long enough to see Cas got punched in the face by Alastair. Her nose broke with a resounding crack. She spat out blood and stood her ground as Alastair charged her.

Dean passed out from the pain.

When he woke up again, he was lying in a hospital bed. The smell of antiseptic stung his nose.

He looked to the side of his bed, and found Cas sitting there in a plastic chair, without any of the bruises or cuts that she sustained from the fight.

Something told him it was past visiting time.

“Are you all right?” Cas said over than the beeping of the machines.

“No thanks to you.”

“You need to be more careful.”

Dean would have felt almost touched that the angel cared, if he wasn’t busy stewing in the question that had been bothering him since Alastair’s interrogation. “Alistair said I started the Apocalypse. Is it true?”

“Dean, it’s not your fault.”

“Don’t give me that.” Dean persisted. “Did I break the first seal? Did I start all this?”

Cas dipped her head. “The Righteous Man who begins it is the only one who can finish it.”

“I started the Apocalypse?”

“And you will stop it.”

“I’m not the Righteous Man. You got the wrong guy,” Dean said. He was doped up on meds, and he’d been beaten up by his tormenter in Hell. He was long past trying to stop the tears leaking out of his eyes.

“Why would you think that?”

“All my life, people have been telling me I’m wrong,” Dean said through tears. “I’m as far from righteous as you can get. I’m wired wrong.”

“I don’t understand.” Cas cocked her head to the side. “You have always been as our Father intended you to be.”

Dean choked on his broken laughter. “Excuse me if I have a hard time believing that.”

“You should have more faith.”

“Not really my thing, Cas.”

“I only ask that you have faith in yourself.” Cas stood, and laid her hand on his forehead. Her hand was soft, the hand of someone who’d never done much manual work in her life. It was comforting and safe and warm, like flames in a fireplace. Dean leaned into the touch. “Get some sleep, Dean.”

He did.

\- - -

Dean had to convince Cas to help him stop Sam from breaking the final seal, but Cas came through for Dean in the end, sending him off to Sam while archangels descended on them with Heavenly fury and scorching light.

The last words he heard from Cas were, “I’ll hold them off. I’ll hold them all off!”

When he saw pieces of Cas decorating the walls of Chuck’s living room, Dean felt like someone had cut out his guts and made balloon animals out of them.

Dean’s world was falling apart. He and Sam had released the Devil, and it was his fault the only angel he could call a friend was dead. He’d killed a friggin’ angel.

So it was no wonder he grinned like an idiot when Cas returned to take down Zachariah’s goons and flew him an Sam away from the Zachariah’s smug face.

“It’s good to see you again, Cas.” Dean patted her on the shoulder.

Cas returned his gaze steadily. “You too, Dean.”

Sam looked between the two of them. After a long beat, he said, “So, what now?”


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m fine with just waiting till it’s time to summon Raphael.”

“No, we’re doing this,” Dean said, grinning. “I’m not gonna let you die a virgin, Cas.”

Dean had never been some girl’s gay best friend, most probably because he wasn’t what people pictured when they thought of a gay guy. He had shitty fashion sense, and the only places he shopped for clothes were thrift shops. He liked cars and rock music and he could cook a mean burger but that was about it. Girls talked to him because they wanted bone him, not because they wanted to be best friends.

Dean didn’t know what girls on a night out, but it seemed like Cas didn’t either, so it was good.

They were going to a brothel.

There were a lot of guys walking around the bar without shirts. Dean couldn’t keep his eyes off of the hot pieces of ass that walked past him, while Cas was gulping down beer with the finesse of a drowning man.

“How about that guy?” Dean said, nodding at a hooker with washboard abs. He’d love to hire the guy for himself, but this night was for Cas. Dean was many things, but a shitty friend wasn’t one of them.

Cas leaned towards Dean and whispered, “This is a den of iniquity.”

“Hey, you rebel against Heaven. Have to enjoy the perks, right?” Dean raised an eyebrow at the hooker and pointed at Cas, and the guy grinned back at him. Dean said, “We’ve got a winner. Come on, Cas. It’s time to lose your V-card.”

Cas looked like she wanted to find a hole and crawl in it when the hooker approached the table. She could hardly say a word to the hooker when he led her to one of the backrooms.

Dean should’ve expected someone would start screaming a few minutes later, someone who wasn’t Cas.

\- - -

Dean steered Cas out of the brothel with an arm slung around her shoulders. He had a hard time walking in a straight line because he was laughing so hard. “I can’t believe you just said that about his mom.” 

“I merely told him it wasn’t his fault he was a chubby child,” Cas argued. “The gene was passed down to him in his family. His great-great-grandparents were known in the town for their sizes. His great-grandparents were-“

“Skip to the last part, Cas. It’s the best.”

Cas huffed. “His mother was so fat she broke a chair once.”

It sent Dean into a fi t of laughter again. “You’re killing me.”

Cas gave him a puzzled smile.

Dean would take anything he could get.

“It’s been years since I laughed like that,” Dean said, wiping the corners of his eyes, as he sat in the Impala. The muscles in his cheeks ached.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas said from the passenger seat. “For the evening.”

“What?” Dean said, sure he’d miss something that Cas said. “But it was a total bust. We didn’t do anything.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Cas said sincerely. “Thank you for going out of your way to make this night memorable.

“I didn’t keep that promise, Cas,” Dean said.

“It’s fine, Dean.”

It was Cas’s last day on earth, and he’d promised to not let her die a virgin.

If she couldn’t lose her V-card, then she could at least have a kiss, because kissing was awesome, and friends kissed, and everyone that Dean had kissed said he was good. Well, except for Sam, after that time Dean slobbered all over Sam’s cheek to rile the kid up.

Now that Dean was looking, Cas actually had a nice mouth.

“We should return to the house to prepare for the summoning spell,” Cas said.

“Yeah.” Dean shook himself out of his funk, and drove them back to where the holy oil and lighter were waiting.

\- - -

After Dean and Sam found the Anti-Christ, Cas was the first to suggest killing the kid.

Dean knew they shouldn’t have mentioned Jesse to Cas.

Dean and Sam kicked down the Turners’ front door to find Jesse standing and staring at something on the floor.

It was a doll in a trench coat.

Dean picked it up from the floor. It was one of those Barbie dolls that looked like it had twigs for arms and legs, only this one had dark brown hair and downturned lips set in a stern grimace. It was also holding a small silver dagger high above its head.

Cas was trying to kill Jesse when Jesse turned her into a doll.

“Crap,” Dean said.

Sam started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Dean said.

Sam laughed harder. “I just never thought I’ll see the day you willingly go anywhere near a Barbie.”

A round of hot potato began, where no one wanted to hold Cas, and it quickly ended with Dean nearly dropping her. He didn’t want to find out what happened if he broke Cas when she was a doll.

Dean put Cas on the mantelpiece where Sam wouldn’t step on her accidentally with his gigantic shoes. It was kind of impressive that the doll could stay upright on its tiny feet. Must’ve been Jesse’s crazy-ass powers.

After Jesse left and Cas returned to normal without a single hair out of place in her messy bun, Cas was pretty nonchalant about having been stuck in a girls’ toy. The first words that came out of her mouth were, “He’s gone.

Dean was the one that had to listen to Sam humming Barbie Girl on the way back to the motel.

The damn song wouldn’t leave his head for a whole week.

\- - -

Dean was watching Dr. Sexy sweet-talking a nurse when Cas appeared behind him with a flutter of wings.

“Where’s Sam?” Cas said, peering around the room, as if Sam could hiding his sasquatch ass from her in the small space.

“He’s gone to the gay pride,” Dean said. “You looking for him?”

“I was hoping to return a book to him.” Because of course Cas and Sam were having secret nerdy book club meetings behind Dean’s back. Cas said. “Why didn’t you go to this gay pride, Dean?”

“Mostly because I figure it’s not anyone’s business who I’m screwing.”

It was the first time they went anywhere near the topic of his sexuality since the hospital stay after Alistair’s beating.

“This troubles you,” Cas said, like it was a revelation.

“No shit,” Dean said.

“God doesn’t care about your sexual orientation,” Cas said. “It is a human fiction that He does.”

“I have a feeling He doesn’t care about much of anything,” Dean muttered.

Cas was crestfallen.

“Cas, I know what you’re getting at.” Dean sighed. “It’s just that some people don’t know and hurt people with it.”

“Religion isn’t meant to be a tool for hatred,” Cas said.

“Yeah, well, somebody doesn’t get the memo.” Dean added. “You can stay if you want to wait for Sam.”

Cas turned to watch the television. Dean wondered if angels had a tendency to get addicted easily, like Gabriel with his candies. Dean tried to get Cas hooked on the good stuff like rock music and diner food, but she always disappeared before Dean was half-way through. Cas seemed to like television shows though. Maybe they reminded her of watching humanity from the clouds, only with more drama and love triangles and unexplained amnesia and pretty people.

“Why is the doctor kissing the nurse in a janitor closet?”

“That’s what he does. He’s Dr. Sexy.”

“That’s not the name on his nametag.”

“Just shut up and watch, Cas,” Dean said.

Cas sat next to Dean on the couch. She might sit like she had a stick up her ass, but she was a strong line of presence that Dean appreciated.

\- - -

The hunt was surprisingly smooth-sailing. Dean and Sam hunted down and got the Colt from Crowley, who practically handed the gun over to them. But after that, the hunt went straight to hell.

The Colt didn’t work on Lucifer. Jo and Ellen died. Cas came back from her detour smelling like ash and smoke, just in time to teleport Dean and Sam away from where Lucifer was raising Death.

That was the moment that Dean realized they couldn’t beat Lucifer or stop the Apocalypse. He banished Cas and walked out on Sam and Bobby. He wanted to say yes to Michael, because it had to be better to have the angels won than Lucifer, even if both sides were evil bags of dicks that wanted nothing more than see humanity burnt.

In a dimly-lit alley, Cas thoroughly trounced Dean once she found him. Her fists were harder than the brick walls she threw him against. Dean was coughing up a lung by the end of the fight.

It reminded him how much of an angel Cas still was.

\- - -

They stood in front of a warehouse where the angels were hiding Adam.

Cas pulled out a box cutter from her pocket. Dean didn’t want to know where or why she got it.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sam said.

“Do you have a better plan, Sam?” Cas said irritably. “I don’t see how you can save Adam from the angels guarding your half-brother.”

“There has to be another way,” Sam said. “There is always something else we can do.”

“There is no other way,” Cas said, “and we’re running out of time.”

Cas unbuttoned her blouse, revealing a nude bra underneath. There was nothing sexy about it, especially not when she took the cutter and started carving an angel banishing sigil on her lean stomach. Sam looked away, but Dean only watched, because he owed that much to Cas, as she cut with a steady hand.

After she finished, she wiped the cutter clean before pocketing it. She buttoned up her blouse, careful not to activate the sigil before it was time.

“Come in when you see the light. It’ll mean the angels are banished.” Cas didn’t glance at Dean as she strode through the doors of the warehouse. She didn’t have to; Dean could read the ‘I did this for you’ in the stiff lines of her shoulders.

Less than a minute had passed before Dean heard the agonized screams from inside the warehouse. When he and Sam ran in, the angels were gone.

So was Cas.

Dean failed to save Adam from being possessed by Michael.

It was all for nothing.

\- - -

Cas lost her mojo after pulling the banishing stunt.

She needed to eat and sleep. These days, her hair was looking messier than ever, because neither Sam nor Dean nor Cas knew how to tie her hair back into a bun, and the lipstick she was wearing faded with each easing day.

She looked almost innocent when she slept in the backseat of the Impala, with her mouth hanging open.

“I don’t know if we should let her come with us, Sam,” Dean said, breaking the silence of the car.

“Why not?” Sam said.

“She’s falling,” Dean said. “We can’t take care of her when we’re on the tail of Lucifer.”

“You let Bobby help,” Sam said.

“It’s different. He’s a hunter.”

“Who was sitting in a wheelchair for a year until today.”

“Cas has never been a hunter or a human,” Dean said. “She was a friggin’ fallen angel. I had to remind her to eat for the last two days. She could barely function on her own, Sam.”

“She went to Hell and back for you, literally. I think she can take care of herself, Dean,” Sam said. He eyed Dean. “Is this because Cas is a girl?”

“What? No!” Dean said, looking away from the road to glare at Sam. “I’m not a total shithead.”

“We don’t exactly work with a lot of women, you know,” Sam said.

“We’ve worked with woman hunters.”

“We’ve worked with Ellen and Jo,” Sam corrected. “And we used Jo as bait the two times we worked with her, Dean, to get to H.H. Holmes and Crowley.”

Dean scowled. “Not my fault most hunters are men, Sam.”

“I know,” Sam said. “But I’m just glad we have Cas on our side. We need all the help we can get.”

“I just don’t want Cas to get hurt,” Dean said.

“She’ll be fine, Dean. Stop worrying.”

Dean wanted to point out he wasn’t going to stop worrying. Sam didn’t know Cas like Dean did. Sam wasn’t there when Cas summoned a lightning storm to reveal the shadows of her wings or when she held off the archangels. Sam didn’t understand that Cas only looked like a woman because that was what she was wearing. 

Dean wasn’t worried because Cas was a girl.

He felt uneasy because he remembered the archangels and the bloody chunks of Cas draped over Chuck’s ceiling fan.

\- - -

Cas was pulverized into tiny bits of flesh, while Bobby had his beck broken.

By the time Cas came back and resurrected Bobby, Sam was trapped in the Cage with Lucifer and Michael and Adam. Dean was too numb to feel much of anything other than grief and guilt over Sam’s death.

Dean kept driving for a long time, after Cas said her not-goodbye and fucked off back to Heaven.


	5. Chapter 5

After the year Dean spent away from Cas or Sam or any supernatural monster, it was surprisingly easy to pick up his weapons, get in the Impala, and get on the road again.

It was easy to sway back into Cas’s personal space and stare into unflinching eyes.

It was good to have his family back.

Dean put away the books they had used for research. Usually it was Sam who did this sort of stuff while Dean went to look for a hookup in town, but now Sam was sulking on the couch watching the weather forecast on the news. He wasn’t even trying to pretend he was busy.

Dean planted himself squarely in front of Sam.

“You’re blocking my view,” Sam said.

“You’ve been acting like a bitch all night,” Dean said.” What’s going on?”

Sam glared at him.

“Are you pissed Cas didn’t answer your prayers?” Dean said.

“I thought you only like men, Dean,” Sam said.

Dean arched an eyebrow. “As a matter, I still do.”

“So why is Cas getting you hot and bothered now?” Sam said.

“Are you on drugs?”

“Right, you two just have – what did Cas call it? – a ‘profound bond’.” Sam snorted. “You should have said something earlier, could say it when Dad was alive. Wouldn’t disappoint him so much.”

Dean’s mouth dried. “What are you saying?”

“You were not the only one Dad was pissed at, Dean,” Sam said. “He yelled at me too, for encouraging you. But I bet you were too wrapped up in your drama to notice.”

“You don’t mean this,” Dean said weakly.

Sam snatched the room keys from the coffee table. “I’m going out for food.”

Dean stared after Sam, feeling like Sam had just ripped out his heart and stabbed it with Ruby’s knife. Sam had always been the one constant that got Dean through the verbal and physical abuses the people hurled at him. It was bad enough that Sam went to Hell. It was worse to have Sam overturned everything they’d been through together and threw it in Dean’s face.

That should’ve been his first clue that Sam was soulless.

But then, hindsight was 20/20.

\- - -

Dean ate breakfast at a diner a few blocks away from the motel. Cas had dropped in, and Dean had just asked her to stay for a while.

Dean had ordered a cup of coffee for Cas, because it was the only thing she’d drink willingly, if she drank at all. Today, the coffee remained untouched in front of Cas, while she watched some Saturday morning cartoon playing on the television in the diner.

“You know I don’t feel like that about you, right?” Dean said, the words tumbling out like loose stones.

Cas blinked at Dean. “Excuse me?”

“I’m gay.”

“Yes,” Cas said.

“There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just gonna put it out there and hope for the best.”

“That’s often the best way,” Cas said dryly.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Dean laughed shortly. “I’ve met a lot of people that thought they could fix me. But this isn’t something that can be fixed.”

“I know. You’re perfect as you are.”

“Quit saying stuff like that to me, Cas,” Dean said, trying desperately not to raise his voice. “You’re my friend, that’s it. I like you a lot, but I don’t love you the way couples do? I can’t, okay?”

Silence hung like a heavy veil over them.

“It’s not my intention to mislead you. You’re my friend,” Cas said slowly. “I ask nothing more than your comradeship.”

Dean nodded. This was what he wanted. He should be feeling relieved, not the aching hollowness coiling in his guts. “Okay. Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”

“There’s work to be done in Heaven.” Cas said.

“Right.”

“I should go.” Cas didn’t wait for Dean’s answer before she took off in a rustle of feathers.

Dean stared at the cup of cooling coffee that Cas had never touched. “Yeah. Okay.”

It’d be stupid to compare himself to a cup of coffee.

\- - -

Dean woke up groggily. He was tied to a chair, with his hands bound behind him. Sam was in a similar situation right across from him.

The back of his head was throbbing from the baseball bat that someone hit him with.

It definitely wasn’t his favorite way to wake up in.

A tall guy with dark hair and eyes knelt down next to Dean. The guy had the chiseled kind of features that would look good in an underwear ad. Dean would’ve hit on him if he hadn’t just kidnapped him and Sam.

“You’re hot,” Dean said. “Too bad I’ll have to kick your ass.”

The man laughed. “Wow, I’d have found this meatsuit a lot sooner, if I knew this was all I needed for you to talk sweet to me, Dean.”

“Do we know you?” Sam said.

“Yes, you do, Sammy,” the man said with a leer. “Remembered when Lucifer raised Death? I nearly got you, Dean. Pity your little girlfriend sacrificed herself to save you. What’s her name? Jo, isn’t it?”

“You bitch!” Dean strained at the ropes tied around his hands.

“Not anymore.” Meg smiled. 

“What happened to your old meatsuit? Got chewed up by your dogs?” Dean sneered.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Meg said. “I’m here to talk business.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you,” Dean said.

“Didn’t I hear something about Sammy losing his soul in the Cage?” Meg said.

Dean stilled. “What about it?”

“You boys are working for Crowley. You can give Crowley to me,” Meg said, sauntering towards Dean. “And I’ll make sure Crowley tells you how to get Sam’s soul back.”

They made the deal.

Dean was quickly starting to regret it when he took Cas with them to meet up with Meg, who had her rag-tag team of demons.

“Remember me?” Meg said, grinning down at Cas. Meg was friggin’ tall in his new meatsuit; he was taller than Dean and nearly as tall as Sam. “Because I sure remember you.”

Cas looked at him in contempt. “Why are we working with these abominations?”

“You know each other?” Dean said.

“I was trapped in a ring of holy fire,” Cas said. “He taunted me.”

“Don’t be like that, Clarence,” Meg cooed. “We had a pretty good time.”

“I stepped on the back of your scorched body to cross the holy fire.”

“After you tried to kiss me.”

“It was a ruse,” Cas said. “You fell for it.”

A suspicion nagged at the back of Dean’s mind. “Wait. Meg, don’t tell me you change your meatsuit because of Cas.”

“What’s it to you, Dean?” Meg said, straying too closely to Cas.

Dean wanted to punch him in the face. “Nothing.”

“Can we go now?” Sam said.

They headed for Crowley’s hideout, where, it turned out, hellhounds were waiting for them.

When Meg offered to hold the hellhounds back, what Dean didn’t expect was for Meg to grab Cas and kiss the hell out of her.

“Wha-?” Dean started to say.

He took a first step towards them. He stood stock still the moment Cas slammed Meg into a wall and returned the kiss. Dean hated it. He wanted to pull Meg off of the angel and rip his filthy hands off of her. He didn’t because Cas was free to kiss whoever she wanted. She could burn Meg out of the meatsuit if she wanted to.

Dean didn’t have a claim on Cas. He was just a friend. Like he said so himself.

Meg looked even more like a sleazy scumbag with his hair mussed and the angel blade he took from Cas.

Dean didn’t feel too bad about leaving Meg behind to take care of the hellhounds.

Crowley didn’t give up any information about Sam’s soul. It was Death who later returned Sam’s soul onto Sam, with only the vague assurance that a wall would hold back his memories of Hell.

It opened a new can of worms.

\- - -

Cas’s douchey friend sent Dean and Sam to a bizarro world where apparently their lives was a television show and they were actors.

Dean prayed to Cas, and it actually kind of worked, except it didn’t.

Dean could only stare when the Cas in front of him pulled out a script, unbuttoned her blouse and let down her hair and grinned.

Yeah, this was definitely not Cas.

Dean grabbed the script from her. “Misha? Your name is Misha?

“Oh, wow,” Sam said.

“Yeah, very funny. Laugh it up. Like that joke hasn’t gotten old three years ago,” Misha said, rolling her eyes. It was friggin’ weird to see that on Cas’s face.

“Okay, we need to get out of here, Sam,” Dean said, stuffing the script back into Misha’s hands.

“I thought you guys want to run lines?” Misha yelled from behind them as they walked away.

The studio was actually a huge ass place. After walking around the studio in circles, Dean and Sam ended up in Jensen’s trailer.

While Sam was looking up their fake selves on the Internet, Dean poked around the trailer. He found a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom with a king-sized bed and a walk-in closet.

A huge corkboard was mounted on the wall of the bedroom. The corkboard was covered with photos. It was a no-brainer who it belonged to, since Dean spotted his fake self in each of the photo with different people. Dean was guessing those were the crew and co-stars he met working on the show.

There was a photo of his fake self grinning with an arm around a guy that looked exactly like Lucifer, which was plain wrong. Dean spotted some poor saps that he’d helped ages ago on hunts, and they were actors in this world, not people that had lost their family or friends to supernatural monsters.

It was messed up.

Dean finally found a picture that had his fake self and fake Sam together. They were leaning as far away from each other as possible. The only thing holding them together was Misha with her arms slung around each of them and grinning at the camera.

Now that Dean was looking for it, he noticed a few more photos of his fake self and Misha. One of the photos pic in a tuxedo and an evening gown, his fake self was kissing Misha on the cheek and they were laughing. There another was one where they were dressed like Dean and Cas and standing in what looked like Bobby’s kitchen. It was not the real him and the real Cas, because the camera had caught them in mid-laughter, looking at each other.

Dean didn’t have much to laugh about with Cas these days.

Dean had to stop himself from looking for more of those pictures. This was not his world and that was not his Cas and this was not him. He didn’t know if they were friends that were just used to being touchy-feely, or if they were something more. It wasn’t any of his business anyway.

Dean had learnt a long time ago not to dwell on things that could’ve been.

What he and Sam needed was a ride back home.

Later, when Misha got her throat slit and fake Ruby was crying over the news, Dean had to tell himself again that this was not his world.

\- - -

It turned out Cas had been working with Crowley to open Purgatory all along.

Dean wanted so bad to believe Sam and Bobby were wrong. He gave Cas one final benefit of doubt, even when they’d trapped Cas in a ring of holy fire, the smoke stinging Dean’s eyes.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not working with Crowley,” Dean said.

She looked everywhere but at him. The wrinkles around her eyes deepened like she was pained. Dean felt like the air was punched out of him.

“Son of a bitch.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Cas said.

“Cas, there’s gotta be some other way,” Sam said.

“Despite what you thought of my looks, I’m not stupid.” Cas glowered at Sam. “If there were another path, then I would’ve taken it. I didn’t make a deal with Crowley on a whim.”

“Not a whim, just a really badly thought out decision,” Dean said.

“Raphael will kill us all,” Cas insisted. “This is the only way to protect you. With the souls from Purgatory, I can defeat Raphael.”

“If you’re so sure you’re right, why would you keep it a secret?”

Cas’s gaze dropped. It was answer enough.

“You should've come to us for help, Cas,” Dean said.

“Maybe,” Cas allowed. “But it’s too late to turn back now.”

“Dean,” Sam said cautiously. “Look out the window.”

The wind picked up outside the house, despite it having been quiet for the day. It was too loud and too sudden to be natural. Outside the window, a large cloud of dark demon smoke was heading in their direction, moving thickly in the air.

“They’re coming. You have to run,” Cas said.

“Cas, please,” Dean said, and he didn’t know what he was asking for.

The smoke howled. Cas’s eyes blazed. “Run!”

Bobby and Sam didn’t need to be told again. They ran, Pausing by the door, Dean looked back into the room. Cas was standing in the ring of fire and alone in the house. Her jaw was clenched.

It hurt to know Crowley was coming to save her from him and Sam and Bobby. If Dean left, Crowley would release Cas and make good on whatever deal they’d made to release the souls of Purgatory.

Cas would just be another monster Dean had to hunt.

“If you are doing this for me, if you think this is what you think I want, I’m telling you: I don’t want it,” Dean said. “I don’t want any of this, Cas.”

“Just go, Dean.”

Dean went.


	6. Chapter 6

Cas became the new God.

Leaders of organized religions were killed over the world. People on talk shows all had something to say on the topic. Something like how God couldn’t be a woman and what it meant that God didn’t hate gay people and whether the existence of God proved that dead atheists were burning in Hell for eternity.

But they sure didn’t mind that God was white and American.

Dean switched off the television, cutting off an Evangelist’s rant about how this was the oncoming of a matriarch society and the economy would go down the drain if they didn’t a thing about it.

“I’m watching that!” Sam said from the couch.

“It’s bullshit,” Dean said.

“I know,” Sam said. He switched on the television again. “But we have to keep an eye on Cas’s movements, Dean.”

“Well, tell me if she showed up and killed the guy. I’ll watch the shit out of that.” Dean left the room and slammed the door behind him as the Evangelist continued with his rant.

Dean stopped going onto the Internet after seeing a ton of websites with polls for horny teenagers to rate the hotness of God. 

No one told Cas taking over the world would be easier if she was a dude, but it wasn’t her fault her vessel was a woman, just like it wasn’t Dean’s fault he liked guys.

Life wasn’t fair.

Didn’t mean Dean had to like it.

Dean refused to watch any news about the new God, until the new God appeared in their motel room, bloody and ruined by the monster souls inside her.

\- - -

God was dead, and the only thing left of her was a trench coat.

It sounded like the punchline to a bad joke.

For far too many nights, Dean woke up in sweat-soaked clothes from dreams where Cas waded into the lake with black goo dripping down her face and burst underwater.

The speculations and debates about Cas continued after her death, but the news died out eventually. A missing God couldn’t keep political scandals and overseas wars away from the headlines forever.

In bars, Dean found himself looking at women. Women whose eyes were just a little too bright, whose bun was a little too messy, whose clothes was a little too rumpled.

Maybe, just maybe, one of them would be Cas, because Cas always made it back.

“Here you go,” the stubbly bartender said from behind him.

“Thanks, man.” Dean grinned at him as the guy set down two glasses of beer on the bar.

“You’re welcome.” The bartender winked, before leaving to serve a grumpy truck driver at the other end of the bar.

Sam was frowning at Dean.

“What are you looking at me like that?” Dean said.

“You’ve been staring at that girl for the last five minutes, Dean,” Sam said.

They were treading on dangerous grounds. Dean still hadn’t forgotten the last time Sam wanted to talk about Dean and girls in the same sentence. It wasn’t a conversation Dean wanted to have again. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Sam said. “I was watching you.”

“Creepy much, Sam?” Dean said. He forced a grin. “‘Sides, I am God’s gift to men, Sammy, not women.”

“Sexuality is more fluid than you think, Dean.”

“Right.”

“I remember what I said when I was soulless, and I need to tell you I was wrong. I didn’t have a soul when I said it,” Sam said. “My point is: I‘m proud of you, Dean, and I’ll support you no matter what.”

Dean breathed easier, like a weight on his chest had loosened. “Couldn’t you have just said that from the start? Would’ve saved us a lot of time.”

“I mean it,” Sam said sincerely.

“I know you do, Sam.”

They sipped their beer. The bartender was looking worriedly at where two frat boys were arguing over the jukebox.

“If Cas had been a guy, you would’ve been all over her in a second,” Sam said.

“Yeah, too bad,” Dean said, drinking his beer. “She could’ve been a hot dude with a nice fat dick.”

Sam’s spit-take was a thing of beauty.

\- - -

Sam’s mental state had been deteriorating ever since Cas knocked down the wall in his head before she became God.

After Dean admitted Sam into a hospital, Dean followed a path of hearsays and ended up on the porch of a faith healer called Emmanuelle. The advice he got was to play nice with the husband, David. Dean made sure to write it down, because he would do anything to get Sam better again.

A guy answered the door. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Emmanuelle. Is she home?” Dean said.

“No, she’s lying down. Just got back from a long trip, you understand.”

“So, uh, when can I see her?”

“Come back tomorrow, okay?” the guy said, crossing his arms.

Dean looked through the window, and saw a man tied and gagged on a chair inside the house.

The eyes of the guy that Dean was talking to turned black.

Dean knifed the demon in the chest, watching with satisfaction as it lit up in orange sparks. He kicked the body down the steps of the porch.

“What was that?”

Dean knew that voice. His stomach dropped like he was free-falling without a parachute.

Standing at the feet of the stairs at the front of the house, was Cas, staring up at him with big blue eyes. “I saw its true face. It wasn’t human.”

Of course it would be Cas.

Of course she wasn’t dead.

\- - -

Dean followed Cas into the house. It was sparsely decorated but comfortable. He hovered by the doorway as Cas untied the man, who he guessed was the David that Mackey talked about.

David had a strong jawline and thick dark hair that was combed to the side. There were matching wedding rings on their hands. He watched Cas with large worried eyes and wrapped a protective arm around Cas’s back.

Only Dean wasn’t so sure who should be protecting who in this house.

“I’m Emmanuelle,” Cas said. She had let her hair down and lost the severe dark lipstick she used to wear. She was wearing a light casual dress, was a far cry from the pantsuit she had been wearing since forever.

She almost looked soft.

Dean shook Cas’s hand. He ignored the warm fluttery feeling in his stomach. “Dean. I’m Dean.”

Meg found them on the way to the mental hospital, still wearing that tall dark guy as his meatsuit. He wouldn’t stop making eyes at Cas. Dean couldn’t explain the bitterness in his mouth watching Meg flirting with Cas.

Once they reached the mental hospital, Dean was still thinking whether to let Cas knew about her past. She had a good life. She could just heal Sam and went back to it, Dean didn’t mean for Cas to overhear him talking to Meg.

Didn’t mean for Cas to remember.

Cas had a pretty good thing going back there. The moment Dean handed Cas the trench coat, he knew it was gonna be torn down around her like a house of cards, like he did to everything and everyone. It might be a lie, but it was a good lie.

Cas took the coat and never once looked back at where the small house or the handsome husband were waiting for her in the suburb. The apple-pie life she’d built.

Dean didn’t know why he was expecting anything different.

\- - -

Dean drove away from the hospital. It felt wrong to leave Meg with Cas at the hospital, but Meg was the only one that that they could count on to take care of Cas, which really said something about their messed up lives.

“So Cas is married?” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Dean said shortly.

“What are you going to tell her husband?”

“I’m not gonna tell him anything.”

“He’ll look for her, Dean,” Sam said.

“Hey, he’s welcome to call the cops on us. It won’t be the first time that happens,” Dean said.

“You won’t let him know his wife is in a mental hospital?” Sam said, making that bitchface that meant he thought Dean was being a shitty person, which was one of the few things Dean freely admitted to being in his life.

“You want to tell him his wife is actually an Angel of the Lord and is now seeing the Devil in her head? Be my guest,” Dean said. “While you’re at it, ask him what he was thinking, marrying someone with amnesia.”

Sam huffed. “I just think it’s kind of shitty leaving him hanging and waiting for Cas.”

“She left us hanging this whole time after she walked into the river,” Dean said. “We did fine.”

“We didn’t do so well, Dean,” Sam said, rubbing his forehead, which housed Lucifer a few hours ago. 

“We did fine,” Dean insisted.

Sam gave up with a sigh and leaned back in his seat. It wasn’t long before he started snoring.

If Dean thought the husband looked kind of like himself, it was just because he was a self-centered asshole when it came to anything about Cas.

\- - -

After Dean and Sam found a piece of stone tablet, Meg called them because Cas having woken up.

Cas wore her trench coat over starched white scrubs. She was wearing lipstick again and her hair was carefully braided into a bun that Dean was willing to bet Meg was responsible for, because Meg was a girl at heart no matter what meatsuit he was wearing.

It was eerie that Cas looked so neat for once in her life when she was out of her damn mind.

A teenager popped up to steal the tablet, but it turned out he was a prophet.

Dean was all for having a prophet on their team. That was why he squeezed Kevin into the backseats of the car next to Meg and Cas, while Dean drove and Sam rode shotgun. They were probably the oddest rag-tag team to ever sit under the same roof.

In the rearview mirror, Dean could see Meg putting his hands all over Cas. Kevin was pressing himself as far against the car door and away from the other two as he could. The kid was seconds away from rolling down the window and jumping out of the speeding car to get away from the craziness he found himself in.

“Give me a smile, angel,” Meg said. He cooed, “That’s it. You look so beautiful, Clarence.”

Irritated by the antics in the back of his car, Dean said, “You know Clarence is a guy name, right?”

“You wouldn’t care if you could see her like I do,” Meg said dreamily, lifting Cas’s chin with the tips of his fingers. Cas smiled fondly at Meg. Dean wanted to puke and it wasn’t because of motion sickness. “Besides, it doesn’t stop you two from calling me Meg.”

Kevin hesitantly said, from where he was sitting more on the car door armrest than his seat, “His name is Meg?”

Meg smirked at Kevin and flashed his male model teeth. “Sure is, kid.”

“It’s not,” Dean said. “Meg is his old meatsuit’s name.”

“It’s a long story,” Sam added.

But Meg’s words stuck with Dean.

\- - -

Dean was driving back from a grocery run when Cas showed up in the passenger seat. The thing was she was buck naked and covered in bees.

“Dean.”

“Shit!” Dean started violently. The car swerved and Dean yanked the wheel to drive the car onto the shoulder of the road.

Dean opened the car door and stumbled out to put some space between him and the bees. He felt itchy just from looking at the bees crawling over Cas’s bare skin. The insistent buzzing didn’t help either.

Some people might find it sexy, but Dean just wasn’t that into bees.

Cas was still sitting in the car like a dejected car show model.

It took a minute before Dean found the courage to walk up to the car again, and then he had to look away again after he saw the small insects crawling over her crotch with their many tiny feet, which, no, just no. Dean was itching all over again.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Cas looked down at herself and peered at the friggin’ legion of bees. Just when Dean thought she got it, she said, “I left the honey at the tree. I’ll get it back for you next time.”

Dean sighed. “I’m talking about your clothes, Cas.”

“Yes. I took them off.”

“Why did you take them off? It’s not like you have to shower.”

Cas stared at Dean like he was being stupid. “I had to watch the bees.”

“Cas,” Dean said, bending down to lean on the car door without getting too close to the bees. “You wear more clothes when you watch bees, not less.”

Cas frowned at him. Without anther word, she disappeared again, taking most of the bees with her.

“Dammit.” Dean didn’t think he’d convinced Cas. He could only hope Cas wouldn’t pop up anywhere else with her bees and no clothes.

Dean shooed away the few bees that were left behind in the car. He didn’t get back in the car until he made sure every bee was out of the car.

\- - -

They were in the back of the Impala, not the shitty rental car they were using to hide from the Leviathan.

Cas was wearing her trench coat and nothing else.

Dean was squeezed in the space between her legs. It was a tight fit and nowhere large enough for what they were doing, but Dean managed. He couldn’t see her folds under the dark hair, but he knew they were there. 

“You’re staring, Cas.”

“You have very nice eyes,” Cas said distractedly.

“Flatterer.” Dean ran his hands over her thighs, smooth under his calloused fingers.

Cas arched her back. Her trench coat fell open more; so did her legs.

“You like that? I’m gonna worship you like you’ve been begging people to,” Dean said, grinning up at her. “I bet your husband never did this for you.”

Cas breathed hard, looking at Dean like she was seeing him for the first time. Dean could tell the sensation of having his hands working on her was starting to get to her. Dean could just lay her out on the backseat bench and she would look so good on the dark leather seat of his car.

It took everything for Dean not to rub himself through his jeans.

“I’m gonna take real good care of you,” Dean said, tracing small circles on the inside of her legs. He leaned down to mouth lightly at her sensitive skin. “Make you feel so good, Cas.”

“Dean,” Cas moaned. She reached down and gripped his hair to pull his head back.

He could barely feel it.

Dean woke up hard and aching.

In the darkness of the motel room, he carefully stumbled to the bathroom without knocking over anything and waking Sam.

He took hold of himself in the shower. He didn’t think about vaginas or full breasts; those had never worked for him. Instead, he thought about sliding his hands up Cas’s sides and Cas throwing her head back while she groaned, and he came with Cas’s name on his tongue. He slumped against the wall of the shower stall, feeling wrung out and sated.

Dean caught sight of himself in the mirror. His cheeks were flushed and his lips were bitten swollen.

He got it so bad for Cas, he was turning into a friggin’ girl.

\- - -

Dean stared at the plate of sandwiches that Cas was holding out to him. She looked at him with a wide smile that he’d never seen before her whole stint at the mental ward. “Is Meg telling you one of those making sandwiches jokes? Because I swear I’ll friggin’ kill him.”

Cas looked puzzled. “What jokes?”

“Thanks, Cas. We really appreciate it,” Sam said, taking the plate, and not-so-accidentally elbowed Dean in the ribs.

Cas smiled at Sam, and Dean felt oddly bereft.

“Yeah, thanks, Cas,” Dean muttered.

Cas’s smile brightened. “You’re very welcome.”

Dean looked at her a beat too long. He mightn’t be able to see true faces, but even he knew Cas looked nice when she smiled.

Sam coughed pointedly, and shoved the large plate at Dean’s stomach. It friggin’ hurt.

“What the hell, Sammy?”

“Eat your sandwich, Dean,” Sam said, before chomping away at his own sandwich.

Cas flew away when Dean was half-way through with his sandwich. She probably had bees to watch.

When Cas agreed to look for the real Dick Roman with them, it was almost like the Cas he knew was back again.

Cas might say she didn’t want to fight again, but Dean stopped himself from asking who she thought she was kidding.

When push came to shove, Cas was the one that gripped Dick Roman’s head and let Dean shoved the stake through the Leviathan’s neck.

In Purgatory, Dean met Benny. Benny was absolutely Dena’s type, but it was the last thing on Dena’s mind. What he wanted was to find Cas and get them back upstairs.

One night, it was cold, and Dean and Benny were sitting around a fire that was small enough to not attract attention. The fire wasn’t doing much for Dean’s freezing hands, but it was something to look at in the darkness.

The woods were dead silent. There weren’t even the sounds of cicadas at a hot summer night in the woods. It was not Earth, and Dean could only hear the sounds of the wood cracking in the fire and his and Benny’s slow breathing.

Dean tried to remember how many days he’d spent separated from Cas, and found he didn’t know.

“I know how you feel,” Benny said out of nowhere, when they were pushing through a thick cluster of thorny bushes.

Dean chopped off a branch that ripped a hole in his jeans. “What are you talking about?”

“About finding the angel,” Benny said. “I used to have a girlfriend. Most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. I gave up everything I had to be with her. I died for her.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Dean said, keeping an eye out for any creepy-crawlies that decided to sneak up on them.

“I didn’t regret a thing,” Benny said. “This angel must be a looker, huh, to get you this worked up about her?”

Dean hesitated. Sure, Cas looked good in a way that Dean could appreciate, but “It’s not like that. 

“It’s complicated?”

“You can say that,” Dean said. He and Cas were something more than friends, though Dean couldn’t pinpoint exactly what they were. All he knew was that they shared one of the most important relationships in his life, and Dean wouldn’t stop until he found her. “She saved me over and over again; I’ll be damned if I don’t do the same for her.”

Benny nodded along. He didn’t look like he understood, but he said, “I’ll help you find her, brother.”

Dean didn’t know if he would ever be up to sticking his cock into a girl, but he could get off on the idea of touching Cas and Cas letting him

Dean wasn’t smart like Sam; he didn’t have fancy words for what he was (Curious? Confused? Gay? Bi? Bi-romantic gay?), let alone what this thing was that he had with Cas.

But it felt a lot like love.

\- - -

They found Cas crouching by a river.

Dean knew from the look of her back that it was Cas. There was no one else that would wear a trench coat over hospital scrubs.

When Cas turned around, the first thing Dean noticed was the red lipstick she had been wearing since they were sent here. The red on her lips was one of the few colors that stood out from the mud and dirt in Purgatory, sharper than the washed out blue of her irises.

“Dean,” Cas said with wide eyes.

“Cas.” Dean grinned for the first time since he ended up in Purgatory.

He held her tight in the bone-crushing hug that he always gave Sam, because he knew she wouldn’t break.

It was stupid, but it was still a surprise when he felt the swell of her chest pressed against his; it definitely wasn’t anything like hugging guys. Cas was soft where Dean expected to find muscles. Her lower back curved naturally, and it was easy for Dean to put his hands there and pulled her towards him.

She smelled faintly of honey, fresh and clean and just this side of sweet. Not like anything that Dean had ever smelled before.

It was different, and it was okay.


End file.
